One explanation for why the Sun doesn't shrink at sunset, especially championed by Tom Bishop, is that perspective doesn't work at large distances.

Round earthers looking at Flat Earth theories often ask things like:- Why does the sun not shrink as it recedes to the horizon?- Why does the moon not shrink as it recedes to the horizon?

One answer I have seen is that perspective as we know it on earth-like scales "has never been proven" to work at larger scales. This includes ideas like:- Objects past a certain distance will stop shrinking so much- Objects past a certain distance will stop losing angular velocity so much (i.e. why does the sun cover 15 degrees per hour everywhere on the planet at all times)

What is the flat earth explanation, then, for why planets have widely varying angular diameters?

In the Round Earth model, for example, the distance from the Earth to Mars varies from 54.6 million kilometers to 401 million km. If perspective works the same at any distance, this would mean that Mars should be approximately 7.3 times as big in angular diameter when it's closest to Earth than when it's farthest away.

What's the Flat Earth explanation for this? It has to be the case that the distance to the planets is relatively constant, because you can perform the Eratosthenes experiment on any planet and show that if the earth is flat it's approximately 3000 miles. Are the planets like Mars somehow growing and shrinking? Is that the explanation?

Or are they actually orbiting the Sun on a scale compatible with round-earth theory, and perspective works exactly like the ancient Greeks said it would?

I sat here for quite a few minutes trying to conceive of a believable scenario and came up empty. I hope the FEers of the world are quicker and brighter than I, or this question may go unanswered until eternity.

devils advocate

Or are they actually orbiting the Sun on a scale compatible with round-earth theory, and perspective works exactly like the ancient Greeks said it would?

Great post Douglips! Has anyone seen a flat earth answer regarding the "other planets" and their orbital path? In our world all planets orbit the sun, due to its huge size and gravitational pull but in FE the sun is so small that it couldn't possibly effect the other planets so what keeps them in a predictable path around earth?

Or are they actually orbiting the Sun on a scale compatible with round-earth theory, and perspective works exactly like the ancient Greeks said it would?

Great post Douglips! Has anyone seen a flat earth answer regarding the "other planets" and their orbital path? In our world all planets orbit the sun, due to its huge size and gravitational pull but in FE the sun is so small that it couldn't possibly effect the other planets so what keeps them in a predictable path around earth?

To my knowledge this is another case of Celestial Gravitation to the rescue, where the planets are indeed orbiting around the sun. Remember as well they are much smaller in FE than you would normally think of them. They orbit the sun just like in the old model with an unmoving Earth at the center of the solar system. Since the flat Earth doesn't exhibit celestial gravitation, and the sun/moon duo are the largest objects in the sky, it makes perfect sense that everything else orbits the sun to the FE hypothesis.

devils advocate

To my knowledge this is another case of Celestial Gravitation to the rescue, where the planets are indeed orbiting around the sun. Remember as well they are much smaller in FE than you would normally think of them. They orbit the sun just like in the old model with an unmoving Earth at the center of the solar system. Since the flat Earth doesn't exhibit celestial gravitation, and the sun/moon duo are the largest objects in the sky, it makes perfect sense that everything else orbits the sun to the FE hypothesis.

Aha so they've shrunk the rest of the solar system as well now!

Been busy as they've also had to invent a new form of "gravity", a force of perpetual acceleration (that is specific in which objects it moves), created a worldwide conspiracy that somehow involves extreme co-operation from political enemies, discovered a "shadow Object" that causes eclipses, re-designed the universe and the principals of perspective, (but have yet to produce an accurate map of earth)